LECTURE
Again, it is lawyers and us. A governor so occupied with the high
stake of governance and interplays of political factors, now, as is
the case, called to face lawyers.

Of course, I have had to face lawyers, not on account of strength of
entry to the coveted profession but as a call to represent a view in
matters yet unresolved even as lawyers ought to take the driving
seat.

In reality, I shall not shirk the duty to stand face to face with
lawyers. I shall not elect to open up on my personal inquiries about
the workings of the profession, which have to do with our existence
in a civilized, rule-dominated society. If then for a reason so
unclear, I tend to raise matters not so germane to the profession, I
elect to be viewed as representing the gamut of confusions of our
countrymen on the real determinants of the values of justice and the
real factors necessary for the survival of order and cultured
co-existence.

Now, shall I link the challenge of the convention of the Abuja Bar
to the assumed pre-eminence of the City itself, which ought to
pronounce the cohesion of the nation state and the focus of the more
impelling values?

For me, Abuja is
always a challenge. A challenge to the factors on the national
political firmament; a challenge to factors in coordinate
administration; a challenge to pioneering spirits and a challenge to
setting standards. But if Abuja is a worthy challenge, such that a
stature for the wholesome inspiration of national feeling has to
attend every commitment, it is then a challenge to be taken with
equanimity and such commitment as the unyielding spirit, which gave
birth to the unity, growth, focus and development of this nation
state, Nigeria.

If, therefore, I
am to lend a hand in the push to present the real picture so as to
build a better society, even if it has to commence in Abuja, I shall
take the gauntlet and I shall give an account of myself. In doing
this, therefore, I shall not seek to show learning or scholarship in
another man's field but I shall hold on to my right of joining; if
not leading, in the quest, as it has arisen: if it is law, if it is
justice, is it a matter for the court of public opinion or a matter
for the court of justice?

My sounding board
in this is, therefore, attendant upon the note of warning on the
extent of discordance in our land. In fact, I could not have
mistaken the semblance of order, which has not turned out completely
to inspire our countrymen. Such that they cannot yet accept that the
whole evolving society, the social order, the emerging nation and
the bestriding 1 state are coterminous to the aspiration of the
greater number if as the picture of deprivation is shown, the
greater number are still looking at the political environment with
askance.

With askance,
because the question has remained, how much of our plight can be
accommodated in the scheme of those that matter and those who cause
the ball of public goodies to roll? With askance because the
question is consistent with the position of the law in the
relationship between those who have, who have to pay a retinue of
well heeled lawyers and those who may never really have the
attention of lawyers, any lawyer for that matter, drawn in their
direction. With askance because if it is strictly and pointedly
stated that lawyers who represent must earn their living through
individual efforts, even as every part of public values or the
erstwhile stabilising factors, are being divested and
responsibilities shifting to matters of "can-do,"
the beleaguered and downtrodden will have to be shunted aside,
leaving such a chasm that the poor will never, ever, cross the
divide between the "can-do" or "can afford" and the "can't do" or "can't afford."

By December 29,
2003, (that is about 19 days, hence) we would have done a whole 54
months or about four and a half years of the country's latest
experiment with constitutional democracy and civil rule. This,
optimists and cynics alike, have choreographed as
"nascent democracy".

The concept of a
"nascent democracy" presupposes being brought into being or in the
early stage of development. But it has altogether
never ceased to intrigue, particularly when juxtaposed with the
generic derivative of "nascent" as the
abnormally active condition of an element of our democracy at the instant it is set free from a combination or
complication or entanglement in which it has previously existed.

A stereotype view
of this presents an argument against the background that since we
had military rule all the time, even with sprinkles of forays in
democratic governance, we could not rightfully claim to have a nascent democracy which, in straight standard
words, means an extricated version (from a known complication),
being spruced up for growth and development into the expected frame
and structure of the desired practice (whole).

Sometimes, we
seek to escape these complications or challenge of the words in use
and so resort to calling ours an emerging democracy.
Playing it straight without the rigours of the challenges of
wordsmiths, we see the proclamation of the will of the people as in
the affirmative actions which brought about people-chosen
governments at various tiers, as the indication of birth, which is
expected to be followed by growth and eventual development. Fair
enough, it was in order to say it was a new dawn,
a new era and a new order.

Naturally, there
were public expectations, such that the extent of degradation of
values, the quantum of rot in the infrastructural system, the
erosion of national (including group and individual) confidence, the
strange pariah status, the firm grip of poverty, the flight of order
and procedure; among others, were factored into the cluster of items
upon which public hope was built and upon which public expectation
was high.

It is against
that background that it seems to me that there is something special
and unique, something distinctively Nigerian, about the current democratic experiment, as well as the very
process that under-girds it. That element, which is
distinctively Nigerian has nothing to do with the
so-called "Nigerian factor". It is perhaps that feeling of eerie
freshness and a deep sigh of relief, which accompanied the
democratic advent of May 29, 1999. This, no doubt, marked out the
experience as something distinctively "nascent".

It has to be
remembered always that democracy has had a chequered history in the
Nigerian polity, having suffered a litany of abortions and false
dawns. Since a national democratic tradition has not always existed
- such that a political culture has to run on globally accepted
standards for competition for, power it follows therefore that the
country's young democracy Ii!! ought to be nurtured with utmost
care. Herein lies my own personal comprehension of the notion of
“nascent”.

Little purpose, I suppose, will be served here by my having to delve
into a detailed narrative of the anti-military struggle, complete
with the accompanying culture of arbitrariness, which now straggle
into the polity and for which the urge for a political rebirth is
imperative. Actually, sometime in 2002 at a forum of the Nigerian
Union of Journalists (NUJ), Abuja, I had cause to review this
culture of arbitrariness, not just as the aberrational tendency it
posed, but also as an element of political gap crisis
and proper expectation framework. Arbitrary culture is
defined as a governmental attitude undermining due process,
particularly as in disregard to order and laid down rules. It simply
begot social responses reminiscent of rejection of order in relation
to authorities. Such manifestations as ethnic militia, which
spillover to date could not have been avoided if self help was
enthroned as in the erosion of due confidence in due process.

Suffice that the
struggle was long and protracted; its culmination was a classical
case of clambering from the dark alley to the light where promises
for , objective determination of the values were strong.

In a way, I have to consider hard the ultimate heroes of the
struggle to reach the end of the dark tunnel before freedom. Often
times, I have been tempted to declare that it is the class of men of
the Bar and the Bench. Sometimes, I have been corrected that if it
is not the press, then the men of the wig.

But in reality, I
can hardly think of any other professional class(es) in the country
which has played a more strategic or concrete role to save a
hemorrhaging nation than the legal and journalism 'professions. In
other words, lawyers and journalists. In the court rooms and
newsrooms, in the ranks of civil society and even in the streets,
members of these professions stood up to be counted in their large
numbers.

In the case of
Lawyers for whom we are here gathered, I once had occasion, during
the last Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association
(NBA) in Enugu, to adulate the sense of sacrifice and social
responsibility of lawyers who have had, at all material times, to
lend their weight to the propagation and defence of higher
democratic principles and values. I mean the very fundaments of
civilized governance and the dignity of the human person.

In this
connection, I did not fail to recognize the fact that such was not
always without a cost, sometimes so high a cost. The abiding reality
of the country's nascent democratic experiment is that it is still
fraught with tremendous challenges, and lawyers - both at the bar
and the bench - can ill-afford to, for a fleeting moment, sit on the
fence or to remain impervious to the overriding task of democratic
consolidation.

If then I
underscore this point in a historical context, the
nascent democracy, as we know it, is in actual terms,
the midwife of an old society, pregnant with a new one.
The polity is in a transition. Transition commencing at the end of
the initial transition from military rule, through the second phase
of an all-important transition from an illiberal democracy to
liberal democratic and political cultures.

Indeed, for some
time, we have had to pose the vital question, if any expectations
that the transition process of 1999 would usher in the democracy of
our Ii fantasies, were realistic? That is against the reality of the
fact considered from our own political antecedents, ours necessarily
had to be qualified, as culminating in the struggles to bring about
the western-style liberal democracy, in place of the rudimentary
practice we have had to put up with now.

In effect, May
29, 1999 merely represented the marked beginning of the real
transition to democracy. I say this because it is established, even
to non-students of political history, that the dismantling of an
authoritarian social order is not necessarily followed by an
egalitarian milieu, but a transitional order, which, if not
carefully midwifed, gives birth to social and political upheavals.

To, therefore,
say that the country is in transition is not to make light of the
gains of the past four years of democracy; or to altogether
foreclose its inherent, infinite possibilities and opportunities.
What the country is passing through is not just another transition,
it is a democratic transition, for therein lies the critical
difference.

Notwithstanding,
the limited objectives of a military-supervised transition to civil
rule ought to be fairly obvious; specifically the disengagement of
the military from power, followed by a gradual (or shall we say
guided) introduction of civil constitutional rule, as a prelude to
the enthronement of full blown or unfettered democracy.

This is the
juncture we find ourselves at the present. It was at this juncture
that I had to review the role of lawyers in nation building,
believing that as each man takes on his beat, beats down his
impediments and alters the course of that which would affect the
overall progression, we would all have taken to the field to bring
about the full realization of our public expectations.

It was in that
regard that I declared in Enugu when the larger body of lawyers was
with us for seven days: "indeed, everything about the personages
and visage of the lawyer depict a builder and a joint partaker in
the enterprise called nation building. Some lawyers are accountants.
We also have lawyers who are bankers. We have lawyers who are
teachers. We have lawyers who are estate agents. We have some
lawyers who are contractors and yet we have those who, as
politicians, are of the executive, the legislature and what have
you.

" Like ants building their anthills in the Savannah, each has his
roles to play. Lawyers are versatile. Indeed, consequent upon this
versatility, lawyers can rightly claim that no other profession has-
more impact on the building of the national project than theirs."

I was, therefore, not mistaken when I stated that it "is trite
knowledge that the Nigerian Bar Association and its enlightened
membership, more than any other professional class in the country,
fought tenaciously and courageously, day and night, for the
enthronement (full birth) of a democratic order."

And, as we are here today, just as was the case when you visited
Enugu, "the likes of the fighter extraordinaires, Chief Gani
Fawehinmi (SAN), Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), Femi Falana, Mike Ozekhome
and Fred Agbaje, to mention but a .few, are in the vanguard of the
unfinished popular struggle ,for the ,fuller democratisation of the
nation's political space. "

Perhaps, because
I fully appreciated the challenges ahead, I had contended, as I
still insist, "lawyers can ill-afford to sit on the fence or
remain impervious to the overriding task of democratic
consolidation. I mean a consolidation, which must be anchored on the
rule of law and the supremacy of the constitution. "

Indeed, I was not
wavered as I perceived the environment principally because as I put
it then, "the ranks of the three arms as well as the various
tiers of government are brimming to the seams with legal
practitioners who must see it as their responsibility to illuminate
the dark vestiges of the country’s authoritarian, anti-democratic
past " with the shining armour of justice such that hope and
public expectation would be upwardly bound.

With the benefit
of hindsight, it is arguable that the bar and the bench provide the
polity with a historical link between the past and the present. Even
at the darkest periods of the country's post independence political
history, the judiciary managed always to stand out as an oasis. It
remained the one arm of government that survived the attendant
instability of Nigeria's neo-colonial political economy, manifested
in the forms of regime-change, system-change, etc.

Following the
frequent military seizures of power, it would have been extremely
reckless and utterly incomprehensible, to imagine that the military,
in overthrowing civilian governments, could re-enact or extend its
treatment of the executive and legislative arms to the judiciary,
for instance, by having to do away with the courts and the court
system.

Of course, we
have causes to accept that abolishing or disbanding the judicial arm
of government, in all fairness, would have been an exercise in
abolishing or disbanding civil society, altogether.

As revealed in
history, the military imposed restrictions and severe limitations on
the judiciary in the discharge of its constitutional functions. Vast
positions of the constitution were not only routinely suspended
sometimes, tribunals, including military tribunals, were elevated
over and above superior regular courts. Despite the benign contempt
with which the military in government treated the courts, it is to
the eternal credit of members of both the Bar and the Bench that, to
a large extent, the courts lived up to expectation as the last hope
of the common man, as they confronted the excesses of those in
authority, the arrogance and abuse of power, the rapacity and
corruption of public life.

I do not suggest here and nobody should be under the illusion that
the excesses and arrogance of political power have suddenly
disappeared or can, in fact, be wished away on account of the mantra
of the nascent democratic experiment.
Despite the gains of the past fifty four months, there still, are
more, that the Bar and the Bench can do to ensure that the nascent
democracy continues to thrive, and that it ultimately makes the
vital but long term transition into a full blown liberal democracy.

In the first
place, if military rule could not do without the judiciary, it is
probably a signpost of the place of the judiciary as an irreducible
minimum denominator of any modem government. Under a democratic
dispensation, this position assumes overriding significance. I crave
your (learned) indulgence to suggest here that the law (as
exemplified in the basic constitutional framework) is the
cornerstone of any democracy. By the same token, it is my humble
submission further that the Rule of law is the legal tender of
democracy. The key to the deepening of the political process lies in
upholding the rule of law and in entrenching its tenets as aspects
of an emerging national political culture.

For the avoidance
of doubt, the concept of the rule of law, as I understand it, is
predicated on the writings and seminal thoughts of early
philosophers such as Aristotle, Brocton and Dicey. Brocton had
postulated that law, human or divine, governs the world.

Elsewhere,
Aristotle had drawn the conclusion that the "rule of law is
preferable to that of an individual". Dicey, on his part,
summed up the scope and ramifications of the doctrine of the Rule of
law into three. First, "it means the absolute supremacy or
predominance of regular law as opposed to the influence of
arbitrary power, and excludes the existence of
arbitrariness or prerogative, or even of wide
discretionary authority on the part of the government.
Englishmen, as it is said, are ruled by the law, and by the law
alone; a man may with us be punished for a breach of the law, but he
can be punished for nothing else. (Law of the constitution,
10th edition; page 202).

What this goes to
indicate is that the ultimate objective is equality before the
law, or the equal subjection of all classes to the ordinary law
courts. The rule of law, in this sense, excludes the idea of
any exemption of officials or others from the duty of obedience to
the law which governs other citizens or from the jurisdiction of the
ordinary tribunals (Dicey op. cit pp. 202-3).

It is on the
strength of the above that I argue that I the challenge of the rule
of law goes to the roots of the survival of the nascent
democracy, as well as the federal system, having due
regard to the plural, multi- ethnic character of Nigeria, that is in
addition to the political instability of the past. Of course, we
need not be reminded that democracy, like law, cannot be an end in
itself: Democracy is a means to an end, and one of these cardinal
ends pertains to justice, which can only be actualized through the
instrumentality of the law.

The compelling
quest for the rule of law immediately raises the prospects of the
independence of the judiciary. Hon. Justice Chukwudifu Oputa (JSC as
he then was) has identified the establishment of the court system
and an organized legal profession as landmarks in humanity's search
for justice. At least, the court system entails that aggrieved
citizens or citizens who feel a sense of injury can freely approach
the courts, in the firm hope of obtaining redress and justice. The
greater implication, which is of particular interest to me, is that
the courts are independent, that is to say, that they are not tied
to the apron strings of the executive, or as Oputa put it, the
"other concentrations of power; courts which are free from
legislative pressures, political pressures, big 'business pressures
and what is worse, mob pressure. It is the removal of these
extrinsic and unnecessary pressures that assures, in no small
measure, the independence of the judiciary".

"The court
system," Oputa insists, "further 'presupposes courts which
are not incapable, for any reason like ignorance, corruption,
favoritism, prejudice, fear, favour, etc), of delivering a firm
decision ".

I shall go
further to draw attention to the critical place of another doctrine
- the doctrine of separation of powers -
which, not a few jurists and legal philosophers consider a radical
pillar of the independence of the judiciary.
The French philosopher and political scientist, Montesquieu, in
propounding the theory of separation of powers, drew a sharp
contrast between the legislative, executive and judicial powers of
the state and insisted that these powers should be exercised by
separate and distinct arms or functionaries of the state. Arising
from this is the need "to ensure the restraint of governmental power
by dividing that power, without carrying that division to an extreme
incompatible with effective government ".

Under the
turbulent circumstances of the past four years of our democratic
experiment, it has become clear that the application of the doctrine
of separation of powers is fraught with frictions. This is sharply
mirrored in the incessant squabbles between the Executive and the
Legislative arms, the mutually - reciprocal acts of
blackmail and brinkmanship employed by one arm to
wrest concessions from the other, and seek political advantages,
over another.

Often, attempts
at. resolving the question of relations among the arms, and indeed
the tiers, have always come up with further questions on leadership
or the quality of such in a nascent democracy.
Perhaps, principally because of the manner of transfer , and the
eventual elaboration on the practices in governance, indications are
that gaps exist between what the leader has to be and such manner of
persons who push themselves up to be taken as leaders.

Indeed, I must
say, though with due respect, that for sometime, I have personally
been bothered about the simple way people view themselves as
leaders, what with the itemization of individual traits as depicting
social influences which are further elaborated as indicators of
leadership qualities. Largely, such socio-economic disruptions or
disorientation or changes or even accidents, which throw up some
nouveau riche do also bring in the assumption of leadership
simply because some people have followed a particular economic trend
or wind or favour or regime disposition, to make money and gamer
social following.

Frankly, I have
had reasons to try to appreciate leadership, not necessarily from
the standpoint of political preeminence but mainly on the quality of
the individual, based on proper grounding in the principles and
process of people/resource management. For me, these then can be
transformed or worked at, in translating knowledge and experience in
operating a process into political craft. In each case, the motley,
which squares up only on account of amassing fortune or being
disposed to particular season of power to accumulate wealth, has
dazed me.

To me again, such
networth citizens who, on accident of location or happenstance of
friendship, get associated with those who have had to work systems,
wrote professional and academic examinations and who have had to
lead discerning and skeptical, if not cynical peers, cannot just
wake up in the morning to i announce themselves as leaders. Of
course, we know: that the roadside auto mechanic can fix the car and
it gets going but he is not an Engineer. We know that the carpenter
can fix the licking roof but he is not a Civil Engineer. These are
artisans. They can cut and join the wire
and the plank, but they cannot comprehend the vast, complex and
process design engine or super structure. They are repairmen. They
are surface and never meant to be deep as to command the complex job
of the whole. They are teflon. And in real
world, they know their limitations. What then baffles me is that in
the political world of the aspiring, Nigerian politician, they do
not appear to know their limitations.

The tragedy of
the scenario of artisan or
teflon leadership in the body politic is that the
process of governance is reduced to physical battle for survival.
Consequently, every issue is a matter to be taken to the wrestling
arena in the frame of survival of the fittest As objectionable as
some of the more vulgar developments might seem on the face of it, I
dare say that such altercations - at times benign, at other times
belligerent, are practically inevitable in the course of the
elaboration of the infinite potentials of the democratic project,
nascent democracy, if you like.

As far as the
independence of the judiciary goes, no one who is remotely connected
with the judicial process; least of all members of the Bar and
Bench, could fail to see that the demands are being met, perhaps
slowly, but surely. In terms of both the letter and spirit of the
constitution, the judicial arm of government at all levels is on
course to achieving the constitutional goal of independence.

The establishment
of the National Judicial Council (NJC) and the entrenchment of its
institutional role in the constitution have gone a long way in
enhancing this independence, by taking away from the executive arm
the final say in the appointment of judges at various levels. Also,
in furtherance of this larger objective, the National Judicial
Institute (NJI) exists as a training, re-training and
capacity-building agency with specific reference to the bench.

There is a basis,
therefore, to want to believe that the institutional framework for
achieving the goal of independence of the judiciary is in place, so
to speak. What is probably missing, and I say this with due sense of
responsibility, is the requisite will on the part of the Bar and
Bench to do what is necessary to constantly reassure the members of
the public, especially the underprivileged majority,
that the courts exist to serve the ends of justice
(no matter whose ox is gored), contrary to perceived disposition to
special, well-to-do interests.

This actually
brings me to the next phase of the topic you have challenged me with
- public expectation. Elsewhere, I did
hint of the flaw brought into our system by the failure to
comprehend the real matters in shaping the proper
expectation framework attendant upon the political gap crisis
besetting the nation. Using the Harry Samuel typology,
it was established that the quantum galvanization leading to
obsession against the military, the eventual transfer of power, as
well as the urgent desire to reflate the system to quickly assuage
the yearnings of the downtrodden, created in themselves a
volatile culture of system-stampede and pressure upon
governance.

Put simply,
government did not just have to do with fulfilling the promises of
politicians but also to quickly respond to the prior-transfer
yearnings of the people who had suddenly rediscovered their rights
of expression and participation in policy-making mechanisms. While
this remains the case, the evolving trend of stampede in the demand
of the people ordinarily negates the reality of the resources and
even the possibilities of execution of such projects of ultimate
need.

And in the case
of your profession, the prolonged usurpation of the fine points of
legal grandstanding, against the backdrop of authoritarian military
order also provided its own crisis of gap which now defines public
expectation of the men of the Bar and Bench. The simple question is:
Is it as usual or are we really into an unfettered justice
system?

As you know, I
have had causes to get drawn into the study of the trends of poverty and such manifestations, which in my
findings now put question marks on the extent of cohesion of the
larger society. Attendant upon the fact that poverty,
defined in the Western world as the inability to level up on some
defined standards of living, actually depicts total exclusion, in
our local cases, it violates our sense of worth and saps the energy
to assert, to participate, to urge and to say.

Our society is
not anything near the elaborately cosmopolitan and technologically
advanced West where the basic democratic drive may equal the clamour
to dress as one pleases. It is far from the advanced economies where
the utter lack of the basics of life would obscure the necessity to
urge a right and pursue an accommodation within the frame of a free
society. In ours, the issues are still the basics: akpu,
eba and tuwo. In many cases,
these are sought to be settled before shelter and clothing because,
as we say in our downtown parlance, man must wack first
before him go look for house to put head.

Of course, the
fact of wack (immediate food), which we
cannot shunt aside, does not remove the necessity of shelter and
clothing. But above all, the fact of the absence of any of these is
the ultimate erosion of the dignity of the man.
It is on this ground that I want to consider an angle of access to
justice, which rests on the confidence of the man to even seek
justice, if he has settled the most immediate - food,
to gamer strength to have confidence in the due process of the law
and eventual justice.

To me, the
process of confidence-building, in the justice system, ought to
start from the point of democratization of access to justice in all
its ramifications, taking into cognizance the democratic rights and
fundamental freedoms already preserved under the constitution, the
large corpus of international treaties and declarations on human
rights and humanitarian law.

Access to justice
is not, and cannot be synonymous with access to the courts, though,
nevertheless an important criterion. But the acid test of
democratization of access to justice lies firmly and squarely in the
province of reform of rigid and cumbersome court rules and
procedures, which overstretch the poor and not-so-well-to-do.

As many litigants
can readily attest to, these court rules and procedures constitute,
by far the greatest obstacle to the administration of justice
through the court system. This is immediately evident in frivolous
and contradictory orders and rulings issuing from the courts, but
more importantly, in the long delays, winding adjournments, suffered
by both civil and criminal cases before our courts (almost without
exception).

Such long delays
go a long distance in subverting or undermining the course of
justice and in reinforcing the age-long dictum that "Justice
delayed is justice denied ". In fact, when your larger body
visited Enugu, I had the cause to wonder, "can there really be a
full sanctity of the Bench? And, is it possible to say that as the
executive shakes or quakes, as the legislature shakes and quakes and
as the ship of the state plies the rough waters, that the judiciary
remains completely in good stead, never knowing any storm and never
riding the rough tides which spell disaster?”

Because my
questions are yet unanswered, I have to further repeat myself: has
this anything to do with "give them injunction today when they
need it to their applause; deny them injunction when they did no
need it to their applause and give them the injunction when they did
not need it to their chagrin; deny them when they need it to their
utter consternation and disappointment?”

Again, I have yet
to conform to the argument of some that "the judiciary is part
of the polity and indeed the body politic.” I am aware that
this may have compelled the scenario and question: Shall we drag
our kind to the court of justice or the public opinion? A
question arising from the fact that today, it is hail him! Hail
him! While tomorrow, it is crucify him! Crucify him!

I must be frank
with you in this stead, I have not deviated from my disposition that
the question may mean a lot more: Is it still the weight of justice
or is it the weight of public opinion? Is it still subject to
whatever citations, law, reports, legal authorities or has it now
become subject to newspaper editorials, informed columns and opinion
articles and freelance judgments of writers? And how much of these
will go down well with the poor and downtrodden? How do they fit in?

To me, if
tangible progress is to be made in this direction, we shall be led
by conventional wisdom in pointing in the direction of the Bar and
Bench., would say that the bulk of the initiative ought to from the
Bar and Bench, if as we are building a we]l organized civil society,
we accept the validity of horizontal participation in the national
justice system.

The democratization of access to justice opens the way to releasing
the potentials of the law as a veritable weapon in the fight against
the poverty pandemic. For, it is unfortunately the case that as long
as there is such a wide disparity in the distribution of wealth
within the society as to make a significant majority live below
poverty level, none of the poverty-stricken citizens can lay claim
to full liberty. None can be in a position to enjoy the usual
fundamental rights - the rights and freedoms usually associated with
democracy and justice, as some of the cardinal ends of democracy,
are bound to remain a baleful abstraction until they can be rendered
substantive and concrete in terms of the living conditions of the
populace.

I take seriously
the view expressed by Robert Seidman to the effect that "poverty
exists because social institutions - that is, repetitive patterns of
behaviour - create and recreate it. According to Akinola Aguda,
,however, what becomes of the greatest and paramount importance is
the level of legal and social justice, that is available to those
who are, in reality, poor.

Aguda put the
issue in perspective, thus: "To say that there is equality
before the law is nothing but a myth created by our political rulers
and the lawyers to give cold comfort to the poor, so that they -
that is the political rulers and the lawyers - can have a peace of
mind, We are simply not equal before the law unless we give a
restricted meaning to the word 'equal', All persons
do not have the same opportunity in practical terms to ventilate
grievances within the temple justice. Without equality of access to
our courts for the ventilation of grievances, real and imaginary,
before the courts, the so-called equality before the law is nothing
but a myth ".

At this juncture,
there is this need to buttress this point with the view of a
one-time Chief Justice of. India in a landmark dissenting judgment
in the case of Minerva Mills Ltd V. Union of India.
I want to quote him in detail: "The large majority of people who
are living in almost sub-human existence, in conditions of abject
poverty and for whom life is one long broken story of want and
destitution, notions of individual freedom and liberty, though
representing some of the cherished values of free society, would
sound as empty words bandied about only in the drawing rooms of the
rich and well-to-do and the only solution for making these rights
meaningful to them was to remake the material conditions and usher
in a new social order where socio-economic justice will inform all
institutions of public life so that the preconditions of fundamental
liberties for all, may be secured”.

Considered from
the prime thrust of the leading topic under review, the question to
pose is on the direct link between public expectations and the
reality of our environment. Transiting from dictatorial political
culture, riding rough, through a wobbly, inconsistent pre-democratic
civil rule, we are shepherding our interests as we seek to erect a
social order upon which this society will grow. As we do this,
believing that all would be well for the birth of an equitable
order, is it possible to marry the conflicting points attending to
the greed of a few against the need of the majority? And is it
possible to reach a cohesion due our needy state if at the end of
every process of the court -the Bar and Bench - the poor thunders
out of the courtroom, yelling: no be here this matter go
end o!

If we go home
happy with ourselves that the poor man had bolted, making empty
threats or projecting worthless bravado, when indeed he was supposed
to hide his face of defeat in shame, aren't we altering the course
and culture of the justice system, thereby negating the requirements
for the growth of civil society and abundant confidence in the
national system?

Of course, it may
not be the headache of any of the accomplished men of the wig that
the poor man proclaims that no be for this court this
matter go end. It may even amuse him or her to the
limit that the ignorant poor thinks that justice could be obtained
elsewhere. Of course, speaking straight about the ordered society,
the topnotch legal luminary is right. Justice is obtainable, only,
in the court of law or in the intervening junctures of civil
society. But is such the case here?

If there is an
absence of the developed civil society, such that the environment
presents a situation of no hope or one of every man to himself,
which induces a frustrated ignorant poor man to rake and threaten
that no be for this court this matter go end,
isn't it scary that a culture or an aberrational trend had revealed
a definite attitude of taking law into one's hand
or what is called resorting to self-help?

It is not certain
to me that these will be resolved here. It is not even certain to me
that the fuller dimensions of the trend would have been established
in this short interaction. But I believe that you may have set the
tone in your drive at opening up the society in your Bar Week, what
with the challenge of full discourses on strong legal and political
issues.

I join you to
pray for a road map, and I urge that if you possess the boldness of
which Oputa had craved above, you would have started out on a valid
point in the advancement of the justice system of which the public
yearning would have been met in half and for which we shall say, as
in Enugu State, To God Be The Glory.